


Kicked my boots off and dove in (but I've forgotten how to swim)

by Coal_burningbright



Category: Let's Play Cyberpunk Red - Polygon (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst without a happy ending, Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28887348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coal_burningbright/pseuds/Coal_burningbright
Summary: In which Vang0 leaves but then he’s in Burgers dreams with some long distance science brain thing that Burger doesn’t have a hope of understanding and all Burger wants is his friend to come back to Night City.
Relationships: Vang0 Bang0/Burger Chainz
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Kicked my boots off and dove in (but I've forgotten how to swim)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for clicking on my fic! I hope you'll enjoy it.   
> tw for death of a child (mentioned)  
> More tws in end notes

After Burger’s family had to leave the commune they camped out on a beach for a while. It wasn’t a nice beach or somewhere that boats could be docked but the sand was warm during the day and the water was useful if a bit polluted. 

None of them had known the dangers of water then, not till his little sister went in one day and the water did what it does best which is take things and return them to its depths. 

Sometimes when everything gets too much Burger feels that he is trapped in a riptide, discombobulated and with no idea how to escape.

Burger had felt caught in a riptide the day after Vang0 left.

There hadn’t been a big fight or anything, Vang0 had just said they needed some air and even though it was raining Burger offered to go with them and- 

Burger couldn’t think about what happened next.

Maybe it was that Vang0 had gotten his memories back and gone to find someone else, someone who was better than Burger. 

One week after Vang0 left Burger dreamed of him. It wasn’t a normal “I’m missing Vang0” dream where Burger was yelling after Vang0’s retreating figure and Vang0 never turned around.

No.

This dream was on a warm beach, nicer than the one of his childhood. The water was clean and calm, waves lapping gently. Sitting on a towel under an umbrella Vang0 was streaming.

“Vang0!” Burger yelled excitedly, raising his voice over the wind that seemed to blow up from nowhere, and the crashing of new waves brought by the breeze. 

Vang0 turned and stopped streaming, making a quick \/B. “Hey Burger, I’ve been waiting for you to show up.”

“Vango? Is this--” Burger paused trying to figure out how to word it “This doesn’t feel like a normal dream.” 

“That’s because it isn’t,” Vang0 began explaining, something about electricity and water and brains connecting or something but the ocean drowned most of it out and Burger wouldn’t have understood the rest anyway. “I wanted more time with you even though I know it’s selfish.”

It was selfish, selfish for Vang0 to leave him and then visit like this, not even come back in person. 

“Why did you leave?” 

Vang0 just smiled at him, not the usual electric smile, nor the fake one he put on for streams sometimes, but a tired sad smile that chilled Burger to his core. 

“I needed to keep you safe, Burg.”

Burger doesn’t ask Vang0 if this means he has his memories back. If Vang0 has his memories back then it means he left Burger for someone he remembered, someone better, and Burger can’t take that right now.

Instead, he tells Vang0 about his and Dasha’s latest job and Vang0 tells him about how Sevennite might come out soon. The waves have calmed again but the sky is changing color. Vang0 looks at Burger sadly and kisses him before Burger can feel himself waking up. 

Burger’s only wished not to wake up twice before; when his sister died, and when he left the nomad gang. This isn’t like those times though, he isn’t wishing to stay in eternal blackness forever, just wishing for one more moment with Vang0. 

He goes about the day with his heart half-singing for joy and half falling down, below his stomach, to his knees. Vang0 could see him! But Vang0 hadn’t said he was coming back to Night City.

He almost tells Dasha about the dream, before he remembers how she cornered him and said that “People come into our lives and people leave our lives and maybe we’ll meet again someday but we probably won't and that’s that.” in a no-nonsense way that made Burger want to be mad at her. 

He couldn’t though. 

Three days after Vang0 left Burger looked in Dasha’s cabinet and saw all the dishes were replaced.  _ “There was a fight” _ she had said, but Burger had seen the cuts on her hands and the shattered bits she hadn’t quite swept up on the floor.

Maybe Burger didn’t tell Dasha for another reason too, a reason he’d deny till his dying day. Maybe Burger wanted to keep this secret, keep Vang0, all to himself. Vang0 might have left him but Burger could keep this bit of Vang0 close, keep the hope he’d see Vang0 more and more until Vang0 remembered that Burger was his boyfriend and they loved each other.

Burger and Dasha solve a case about a girl who disappeared and as she goes back to her family Burger wishes his family was back with him. 

He doesn’t dream that night.

The next day Burger tries to rationalize that Vang0 is probably busy and it took them a week to set up the first dream so it’s probably not just that he’s forgotten about Burger.

Still, when he dreams again three days later he lets out a huge breath before he inhales the salty smell.

The waves are a bit bigger now, it seems to be high tide or maybe Vang0 just set up closer to the shoreline. 

Vang0 runs over as soon as they see him and throws his body around Burger. Burger tries to inhale the scent of Vang0, the electric green juice he drinks and home but is met with only the sea. Even in his dreams, the sea is stealing things from him, taking away the scent of Vang0 when Burger  ~~ needs ~~ wants it most. 

“I’ve missed you so much,” Vang0 says. He says it like he isn’t the one who left Burger behind which should hurt Burger more than it does. His feelings seem muted somehow, the way dreams twist things and hide them behind a veil of clouds.

“I’ve missed you more than you can imagine.” Burger whispers back. “How much time do we have here?” The wind blows the waves till they slam on the shore and Vang0 needs to pause for a moment and wait for the din to stop so he can respond.

“Just till morning.” Burger knows the brightness of the sky doesn’t mean anything here but he can’t help but feel like this too is a riptide, a land without a sun but where it’s always bright as day.

“Then let’s not waste more time,” and then Vang0 kisses Burger again and like he actually means to kiss him, like Burger is a life preserver and he has been drowning. They sit on the blanket and Vang0 tells Burger to not touch the water even when it laps almost up to them. Burger doesn’t question why. 

The two of them talk and kiss and Burger is about to suggest a sandcastle when the world seems to flicker and he knows it’s over again. 

He can dimly hear Vang0 yelling something that sounds vaguely like “ _ I’m sorry _ ” after him before he’s back in his bed.

Dasha’s scored them another job and they have to take a cab because of what happened to his Van-Boat, whatever that was. 

Burger’s memory has been worse the past two weeks, people leaving can do that to you, make you sad and silly and caught up in the loss of it all. Maybe with Vang0 off who knows where he’s the one who’ll lose his memory. 

Dasha doesn’t laugh when he tells her that. 

He’s not sure if he wanted her to.

He’s able to meet with Vang0 more frequently as the days go by, though, the water seeing to creep up steadily like it was hungry. “The ocean is always hungry,” Burger thought to himself, almost two weeks after Vang0 left, but that does not mean I will feed it. The ocean had already taken too much from him. 

He was quieter as he went about his daily life, not acting with more thought exactly, just quieter. He spent his days waiting for the night, waiting to be able to fall onto the white sand with vang0 and laugh until his stomach hurt.

Three weeks after Vang0 left Burger dreams that a cloud has come across the sky in their paradise, it begins to rain and Vang0 pulls him under the umbrella. They cuddle there until Burger wakes up. The cloud persists.

Four weeks after Vang0 left Burger dreams of a beach in a storm, the waves towering before crashing down and then pulling back whatever they’ve caught, like a fisherman pulling his net but this time it’s the ocean who is doing the taking. 

At the center of the storm, sitting in his chair is Vang0. He appears undisturbed by the gale around him. It was storming like this that night too, the night-- and then Burger can’t repress the memories anymore.

_ Burger was driving the Van-Boat when it started to rain, Vang0 was in the seat next to him. The wheels were starting to slip as Burger made a sharp turn. There was a pole sticking out. Vang0 saw it. Vang0 saw that the pole was going to run through Burger and made a choice. Burger woke up with a concussion and blood all over him. Trauma team was there. The Van-Boat was towed. Someone was in a body bag. Vang0 was gone. Vang0 was in a body bag.  _

“You’re dead,” Burger stated. “You died for me.”

And Vang0, kind, self-sacrificing, terrible human being for dying and leaving his boyfriend behind Vang0, flashes the \/B at him.

“No!” Burger is mad suddenly. “I never asked you, I never wanted you to die,” his voice breaks because it isn’t fair. Vang0 was a ball of electricity and light and never belonged on a dark beach. He was never supposed to be this far from Vang0.

Burger is standing just outside the storm, the rain forming a wall between him and Vang0, when he begins to step forward Vang0 yells stop so loudly everything seems to pause. 

“Don’t go into the water, it’s dangerous.” Vang0 waves his arm and a small path opens, leading Burger to them.

“Why is it storming?” Burger asks, he knows it shouldn’t be the most pressing thing and at the same time this is the most important question he has ever asked.

“Because you can’t keep coming here.” 

“What?” Burger can’t not see his boyfriend again, can’t be left alone again, not now that he knows Vang0 isn’t coming back to Night City.

“This place,” Vang0 considers his next words. “It’s an inbetween place, where you can wait till you're ready to go for real.” 

“And you’re ready to go?”

Vang0 smiles sadly at Burger, “No. The problem is that you kept coming here, and you aren’t supposed to be here unless you’re dead.” Hearing Vang0 say that he is dead sends another spike into Burger’s heart. “I’m supposed to go into the water and that’ll be the end of it, I’ll go to wherever my final place is.”

Burger can see now that there isn’t much dry land left, soon Vang0 won’t be able to avoid the ocean or the rain. 

“What would happen if I walked in?” He asks.

Vang0 half shrugs at him, “die probably.”

“When are you going in?” Burger tries to stop the trepidation from creeping into his voice but it’s hard. 

“I was thinking we could kiss goodbye and then I’d jump in.” 

Burger wasn’t the smartest man but he did know what he had to do next. “Let me hold your hand and walk with you to the water?” He almost hoped Vang0 would see through him, would tell him nom would remind him he had so much left to live for. But Vang0 didn’t so when they reached the water Burger kissed them and then motioned for Vang0 to walk in. Then, he jumped in.

Burger might have known what he was doing when he jumped into the water to swim with Vang0 forever but when Dasha woke the next morning all she would know was that she had lost the only family she had ever known.

**Author's Note:**

> tw for   
> major character death,  
> death in a manner that could be considered suicide
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! If you liked it please kudos/comment it makes my day my month my year and y week (refernecing the first pcpr not the actual friends episode that I've never seen lol)


End file.
